Under the Ice

Chapter Seven

The view from the Antonov An-22 airliner was a limited one. Since it had crossed the Ural Mountains just south of the Siberian city of Vorkuta, the weather had progressively worsened. Even at its present cruising altitude of 12,500 meters, the sky was filled with nothing but roiling, black storm clouds. Accompanying this front were stiff northerly head winds, and because of the resulting turbulence, the pilot had long ago activated the seatbelt sign.

Peering out the rounded viewing port. Admiral of the Fleet Mikhail Kharkov looked out to the stormy skies and tried his best to ignore the mad, shaking vibration of the plane’s fuselage. Thankfully, he wouldn’t be in this bumpy, unstable craft much longer. For his immediate destination, Murmansk airport, was less than twenty-five kilometers distant.

Encountering an air pocket, the massive An-22 suddenly lost altitude, and Mikhail found himself tightly gripping his seat’s armrests as the plane sickeningly plunged downward. To the grinding roar of its four dual-propped Kuznetsov turboprop engines, the mammoth transport vehicle strained to stabilize itself.

Somehow it did so, yet Mikhail couldn’t help but wonder how the plane’s frame was able to stay in one piece.

The largest aircraft in the world apart from the American C-5A, the An-22 was a marvel of Soviet engineering. Not only could it carry a squad of T-62 battle tanks in its lower hold, but up to 100,000 kilograms of freight and 29 passengers as well.

Currently seated in the passenger cabin situated immediately aft of the flight deck, Mikhail Kharkov knew that he was very fortunate to get this lift. The route from Irkutsk to Murmansk was not a popular one, and nonstop flights were few and far between.

Originally having taken off from Vladivostok, the An-22 had subsequently been diverted to an unscheduled stop in Irkutsk by a single call from General Ivan Zarusk. Though the spirited Defense Minister would have liked to join Mikhail on this trip, affairs of state had sent him packing back to Moscow, along with Dmitri Tichvin and Yuri Kasimov.

Just thinking about his old friend caused a grin to lighten Mikhail’s face. They went back a long time together, and their shared exploits could fill a good-sized novel. Of course, the latest chapter of this book had only recently been concluded. Like a pair of slick black marketeers, they had exploited the two naive bureaucrats right in Mikhail’s own living room. Afterward, Ivan had briefly pulled Mikhail aside and congratulated him on his superb performance. Then after promising to celebrate in style once the rest of their mission was successfully completed, they’d joined their guests for the short helicopter ride back to the Irkutsk airport. Here Mikhail left the others to initiate his current journey.

Again the An-22 plunged downward in a sickening, gut-wrenching free-fall and the Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union silently cursed the weather front responsible for this turbulence. Knowing now why he’d not joined the air force, the white-haired veteran diverted his gaze to the forward portion of the cabin.

There the only other passenger, an Aeroflot flight attendant, was somehow able to sleep through all this terrible weather.

Mikhail had never liked to fly, and doubted if he ever would, no matter how many times he was airborne.

There was something about not being at the controls himself, not understanding the systems involved, that bothered him. It felt uncomfortable to have one’s life in the hands of a complete stranger, no matter how many flight hours he might have logged.

Mikhail never experienced such anxieties when he was traveling by sea. Even when not personally at the helm he felt secure, for a ship’s fate was shared by its entire crew. Very seldom could the loss of a vessel be pinned on one man, though ultimately the captain was always the one held responsible.

The world’s oceans were his second home, and even though pleasant memories of his recently concluded hike to the shores of Lake Baikal were fresh in his mind, he was glad to be going back to sea. When his wife Anna heard of his intention, she’d cornered him while he was in the bedroom hurriedly packing and had fully vented herself.

“What do you mean, you’re going back to sea again? Don’t you realize you’re a seventy-six year-old man? And besides, Misha, you’ve got other responsibilities now. Leave the operational side of your job to younger, more fit individuals. An old man like you will only get in the way.”

Mikhail had been anticipating such a reaction, and did his best to dispel her apprehensions. While still continuing to fill up his dusty duffel bag, he countered, “You’re right, my dearest. It’s a young man’s world out there. But sometimes us old-timer’s are needed as counselors, to share our hard-earned experience, gained by sweat and toil and many years in the field. Besides, I’ll be gone less than a week. And I promise you, once this patrol is completed, I’ll hang up my duffel bag for good.”

This last statement served its purpose, and realizing that it was useless to fight him, Anna pushed him out of the way and completed the packing herself.

As it so happened, he hadn’t been lying to her about quitting the sea for good. There would be much to do upon his return, and he would have no time for the operational side of the Fleet. This would be left in the capable hands of the officers and enlisted men of the Soviet Navy, men who would be instrumental in helping him consolidate the glorious worldwide Socialistic state that would shortly unite all men in brotherhood.

Merely thinking about the realization of his goal caused shivers to run up and down his spine. At long last, the time for dreaming was over. Action was the order of the day, as the world anxiously perched on the verge of a brave new beginning.

It wasn’t mere whim that was calling him to Murmansk. Rather, it was the Sierra Class nuclear-powered attack submarine, Neva. Less than a year old, the Neva was a state-of-the-art vessel, especially designed for under-the-ice operations. Mikhail had been at the Gorky shipyards and had participated in the sub’s launching. Yet never did he dream then that one day in the near future he’d be boarding the Neva himself, to lead it on the most important mission of his long career.

As the enormous airliner that was carrying him to his destiny shook in a violent wind shear Mikhail reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and briefly touched the case holding the steel-jacketed cassette tape that would play a key role in their rapidly unraveling plot. The Neva must get him and this tape to the northern coast of Baffin Island with due haste.

From what he knew of this submarine’s captain, there was no better officer in the entire Soviet fleet to accomplish this task. Sergei Markova was young and aggressive. The talented son of a decorated war hero, he had been groomed since birth for his present position.

Graduating first in his class at Leningrad’s Frunze Naval Academy, Markova had gained Mikhail’s attention while he was attending postgraduate courses at the A. A. Grechko Academy. Acting as a silent patron, Mikhail had made certain that the young officer’s first active assignment had been on one of the Motherland’s newest attack subs. As Mikhail expected, Markova distinguished himself as an officer who could be relied upon, and quickly moved up the ranks.

In an unprecedented five years’ time, Sergei Markova was a full captain. As one of the youngest, most intelligent commanding officers in the submarine force, it was only natural that he be given the newest, most technologically advanced attack vessel in the fleet. Powered by two pressurized water-cooled nuclear reactors, the Neva was built for speed and endurance. The sub’s primary operational area was the Barents, Kara, and Laptev Seas, and of course, the Arctic Ocean. Here the Neva accomplished several diverse missions — from escorting the mammoth Typhoon class ballistic missile-carrying submarines to patrolling clandestinely. Several of these latter types of missions involved surfacing in the pack ice while in unfriendly waters, and not once had Markova failed to fulfill his orders.

The young captain was said to have nerves of steel, and this was just the type of individual the Admiral of the Fleet was looking for. Mikhail was not deceiving himself into believing this was going to be an easy mission. For they would be going deep into enemy territory, surfacing in frozen, uncharted waters, and then searching for an object that was as insignificant as the proverbial needle in a haystack.

The risks were great, yet, if successful, this mission could very well signal a turning point in world history.

As significant as the glorious October Revolution, the outcome of this upcoming patrol could mean the difference between another century of Soviet mediocrity or the final fulfillment of Lenin’s prophetic vision of a world united in equality and brotherhood.

Thus, Mikhail couldn’t even begin to ponder the possibility of failure. For the future of the Motherland, he had to succeed!

A slight change in the An-22’s cabin pressure signaled that the airplane had at long last begun its descent into Murmansk. As the veteran mariner yawned to clear his blocked eardrums, he was thrown violently forward, and then shaken from side to side, by the worst turbulence yet encountered. The entire fuselage vibrated with an unnatural intensity, and as the overhead bins began snapping open, even the soundly sleeping attendant was roused from his slumber.

Mikhail tightly gripped the armrests of his chair, and looked on as the door to the flight deck suddenly popped open. Like a sailor on a three-day drunk, out stumbled the airplane’s senior pilot. A look of concern was on his weathered face as he struggled to make his way down the aisle of the constantly rocking plane.

“Shouldn’t you be buckled up snugly in your seat, Captain, in anticipation of our landing?” Mikhail asked tensely.

The senior pilot held on tightly to the chair beside that of his distinguished passenger as he replied “I’m afraid I’ve got some rather distressing news for you, Admiral. I don’t have to tell you what the weather’s like up here. But down in Murmansk, there’s a regular blizzard blowing. This storm is so bad the airport there has just closed down until further notice. It looks like we’ll be diverting to Severodvinsk. And if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get there before this storm does.”

Not believing what he was hearing, Mikhail firmly retorted.

“We are not going to Severodvinsk, Captain! If I have to fly this plane myself, we’re going to land in Murmansk as planned.”

“But the airport’s closed!” the pilot pleaded, holding on for dear life as the plane suddenly canted hard on its left side. “We’re barely holding together up here at ten thousand meters. Down below, it will be even worse.”

“I don’t care if there’s a full-fledged hurricane down there, Captain. The security of the Motherland hinges on my reaching Murmansk before the next tide changes.”

“But that’s impossible!” protested the red-faced pilot.

“So was the defense of Stalingrad,” barked the determined mariner. “There will be no deviations from our flight plan, comrade. As Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, I order you to land this aircraft at the Murmansk airport right now! Do I make myself absolutely clear. Captain?”

Obviously outranked the grim-faced pilot could only shrug his thin shoulders.

“All right. Admiral. If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. It’s your funeral. To tell you the truth, in this line of work, I never expected to live past forty anyway.”

Like a punch-drunk boxer, the pilot proceeded to return to the flight deck, while Mikhail Kharkov took a deep, full breath to regain his composure. The veteran mariner had come too far to be delayed now, and neither a cowardly pilot nor a tempest from hell itself would keep him from attaining his goal.

The storm hit Murmansk right at the start of the late afternoon rush hour. Already overcrowded with trucks, buses, and automobiles, the icy streets were gridlocked. In this weather, the expedient commuter moved by foot, though even this means of transport had its hazards. Blinded by blowing snow, and forced to pick their way around the already gathering drifts, thousands of scurrying pedestrians left their places of work and madly scrambled to get home before the snow made even walking impossible.

When Sergei Markova and his six-year-old daughter Sasha left their apartment, only a few scattered flurries were falling. By the time they had finished their shopping, the blizzard had struck in all its fury.

Fortunately, Sergei’s wife had made them bundle up properly before leaving home. An avid follower of the weather forecast, Lara had been anticipating this storm, and though it had hit earlier than expected, she’d made certain her family was sufficiently clothed.

With his right hand holding the large mesh bag in which their recently purchased treasures were stored, the thirty-seven-year-old submarine captain prepared to leave the bakery, their last stop of the day. Comfortably dressed in a red nylon, down-filled ski jacket that he had picked up while on shore leave in Gdansk, Sergei turned to see what was keeping his daughter.

As he expected, the precocious youngster was still standing beside a bakery rack, munching away on a freshly baked cookie. She looked like a little marshmallow in her long white fur coat with the matching hat, mittens, and boots, and her proud father couldn’t help but grin as he called out to his only child.

“Come now, Sasha. It’s time that we got going. We’ve been gone long enough, and Mommy’s going to be worried. Besides, you don’t want to miss Uncle Viktor and Aunt Tanya’s visit, do you?”

Eyeing the rack of freshly baked cookies that had just come out of the oven, the youngster excitedly replied.

“Oh, Poppy, can’t I have just one cookie before I go? They’re my very favorites!”

Lev, the white-haired baker, heard this request and briefly caught Sergei’s gaze and winked. Without another word said, he put several of the cookies in a small sack, bent over, and handed them to Sasha, who was one of his favorite customers.

“Here you go. Now be a good girl and give the package to your father so that he can put it in his parcel.”

“But I want one now!” the stubborn six-year-old demanded.

The potbellied baker had five children of his own so he knew how to deal with her.

“You’ve already had two whole cookies, young lady. And with supper time rapidly approaching, you won’t have any room for that cake that your father just bought you for dessert.”

Having already forgotten about this anticipated treat, Sasha weighed the likeable baker’s words. Then with the brown paper sack holding the cookies clutched tightly in one mittened hand, she bid the baker farewell.

“Goodbye, Comrade Lev. Thank you for the cookies.”

As he guided the youngster to her father’s side, the baker responded.

“And goodbye to you, Sasha Markova. Enjoy your treats and don’t eat too much and get a bellyache.”

Admiring the manner in which the red-cheeked proprietor handled his headstrong daughter, Sergei safely stashed away Sasha’s prized cookies and addressed the portly figure who had baked them.

“Good day to you. Comrade Petrofsky. And thank you again for taking such good care of my family while I’m out at sea.”

“Nonsense, Captain,” retorted the baker.

“It’s you who deserve all the thanks. All of us can sleep just a bit more soundly at night knowing that our shores are protected from the advance of any enemy.”

The two men exchanged a warm handshake as a howling gust of wind sounded from outside the glassed-in storefront. Through the steamed-up windows, the blowing blanket of snow that accompanied these gusts could be seen.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to give you a lift home. Captain?” the baker offered. “My truck is parked right in the back lot.”

Sergei Markova shook his head.

“That’s most kind of you, Comrade. But I imagine that the going will be just as fast on foot. And besides, we don’t have far to go, and my wife made absolutely certain that we were dressed warmly enough for a polar expedition.”

The baker chuckled at this and escorted them to the door.

“Walk carefully, my friends,” he said as he opened the door and watched them duck out into the thickly falling snow.

Outside, Sergei found the brisk air invigorating. His daughter seemed oblivious to the cold, and was already scraping the snow off the bakery’s window ledge and compacting it in a tight ball.

“Let’s have a snowball fight. Poppy!”

Before he could answer her, she let loose the powdery snowball that struck Sergei on his right thigh.

“Now hold on a minute, young lady!” he responded, practically shouting to be heard over the howling wind. “Since I’m carrying all the packages, I can’t defend myself. You could at least wait until we get home and I stash away our goodies. Then I’ll take you on.”

“All right!” Sasha screamed, glee in her voice.

With his daughter’s mittened hand firmly in his own, Sergei began to make his way down the snow-covered sidewalk. Though crowded with bundled pedestrians, this thoroughfare was much more easy to travel than the icy street to their left. Anyway the snarled roadway was bottlenecked with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

As fortune would have it, their route took them downwind. This fact, plus their wise choice of clothing, made the frigid Arctic storm all the more bearable.

While taking a shortcut through Revolution Park, Sergei was forced to carry his daughter in his free arm. This was necessary since many of the drifts he was soon trudging through were several meters thick and would have all but buried a standing Sasha.

Halfway through the park, they stopped to watch a team of hockey players at work on one of the many frozen lakes situated in it. Such a sport was serious business in the Soviet north, and not even a howling blizzard could keep the players from their daily practice.

It was while watching them work out on the ice that Sergei thought he heard an alien whining roar through the constant howling gusts. This high-pitched racket could easily have come from a low-flying airplane, on its way to the nearby Murmansk airport. But Sergei dismissed this thought as pure nonsense. Not even Aeroflot, or the devil himself, would be flying on such a stormy, windswept afternoon.

It wasn’t possible to scan the sky in such a storm so the naval officer turned to complete the short, five-minute hike home.

Inside the warm lobby of their building, Sergei and Sasha were met by the apartment’s vigilant duty woman. Olga Rybinsk took her position as concierge seriously, and since she lived in the building, she knew her fellow tenant’s comings and goings better than the KGB.

Because Sergei’s duties kept him away from home for a good six months out of every year, he was glad to have the services of such a watch lady. There could be no better home security force than Olga Rybinsk, for no criminal in his right mind would dare incur the feisty septuagenarian’s wrath. The submariner couldn’t help but notice how the old lady’s eyes lit up when Sasha went dashing into the entry hall.

“Well, if it isn’t the snow princess herself,” the adoring duty woman exclaimed. “Were you out there building a snow castle, Sasha?”

“Poppy wouldn’t let me,” the youngster answered as she studiously wiped the snow from her boots. “You see, we went shopping, and so we have to put away our purchases before we can go back out to the park and play.”

As the duty woman helped Sasha remove her mittens, she firmly commented.

“Those fingers of yours are as cold as icicles, young lady! You’d better rest a while indoors and warm up properly first. This snow will be around for a long time to come, and it will be much more fun to play in once the winds stop. Besides, you don’t want to go out and play while you’ve got company in your apartment, do you?”

Sasha’s eyes widened.

“I bet it’s Uncle Viktor and Aunt Tanya! I do hope they remembered to bring along my birthday present.”

The duty woman looked up and caught Sergei’s glance.

“Comrade Belenko and his wife arrived here approximately a quarter of an hour ago. Captain. According to your instructions, I allowed them to go up to the apartment without first calling your wife.”

Sergei nodded.

“Thank you, Olga. Let’s just pray that I don’t get in trouble for being late to my own party.”

“I believe that the Belenkos said something about being a half-hour early,” the duty woman stated efficiently. “Seems they anticipated this storm and left their place before the rush hour started.”

Conscious that Olga Rybinsk would have made a marvelous intelligence officer, Sergei smiled.

“Then perhaps my guests will forgive me after all. Stay warm, and have a nice evening. Comrade.”

With this, Sergei followed his daughter up a twisting flight of stairs. Though the building had an elevator, it hadn’t worked properly since it was installed.

By the time he reached the seventh floor, he was wheezing and his brow was matted with sweat. In contrast, Sasha, hardly affected by the climb, merrily skipped down the corridor and burst through their apartment’s front door. With leaden limbs, his sack swinging at his side, Sergei followed in her wake.

Inside the apartment, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite was blaring forth from the radio’s speakers. As Sergei identified the particular movement as the “Waltz of the Flowers,” he scanned the combination dining room den and found it vacant.

A roaring fire burned in the fireplace, however, and the nearby coffee table held several platters of mixed appetizers. Yet there was still no hint of his wife’s presence or his guests’.

Only when a characteristic high-pitched voice sounded from the enclosed kitchen did Sergei realize where they could most likely be found.

“Oh Uncle Viktor, Aunt Tanya, it’s wonderful!” exclaimed Sasha.

The mesh bag he continued to drag along at his side seemed to have gained in weight as Sergei headed toward the kitchen. As he had assumed, it was in this cramped, linoleum-lined cubicle that the entire party had chosen to gather.

He first spotted his pert, redheaded wife Lara standing beside the sink. At her feet, Sasha sat comfortably on the floor, already absorbed in the toy doll she had just been given.

“She’s got several additional outfits as well,” observed Tanya Belenko. “We got you the ski suit, some formal wear, and bathing gear.”

As the svelte blonde bent down to show Sasha where these outfits were stored, Sergei Markova announced his presence by loudly clearing his throat. It proved to be his wife who spotted him first.

“Well, look what the wind blew in. I hope you don’t mind, but we started the party without you.”

“So I’ve noticed,” replied Sergei as he swung the mesh carrying bag onto the counter. After accepting a kiss from Lara, he turned to the tall, black-haired man standing by the refrigerator.

“Hello, Senior Lieutenant. Glad you could make it.”

Any guise of formality was dispeled as Sergei picked his way across the room and warmly hugged his coworker.

“Greetings to you. Captain,” replied Viktor Belenko. “That’s some storm that’s brewing outside, huh, my friend?”

“It certainly is,” answered Sergei, who was about the same height as his swarthy second-in-command, but fair-skinned and blond. “Why it was an effort just to keep Sasha from being blown away.”

“That’s not true!” shouted the six-year-old from the kitchen floor. “Come see what Aunt Tanya and Uncle Viktor have given me. Poppy. It’s a Barbuski doll!”

As Sergei bent down to take a look at this present, he planted a kiss on Tanya Belenko’s cheek.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this. Captain,” whispered Tanya with a provocative wink. “People will talk.”

“Let them. I’m not shy,” retorted Sergei playfully, as he examined the lifelike doll Sasha was already expertly dressing in ski coat and boots.

“That’s a marvelous gift, little princess,” he observed. “Why she almost looks real. Now why don’t you gather everything up and take your Barbuski off to your room before one of us grown-ups steps on something.”

“Come on, Sasha dear. I’ll help you,” offered Tanya.

As they began picking up the various articles of realistic, miniature clothing and the colorful paper in which the present had been wrapped, Sergei stood and rejoined Viktor.

“It looks like Sasha certainly has something to keep her out of trouble for the rest of the evening. Thanks for remembering her, comrade.”

“The pleasure’s ours, Sergei. After all, we’ve known Sasha since she was an infant, and we like to think of her as our own flesh and blood.”

Sergei smiled.

“We’re very lucky to have friends such as you and Tanya. So what do you say to a drink to seal our bond?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Viktor replied.

Beside them, Lara Markova was in the process of emptying the mesh sack her husband had just brought in. Most of the items she took from it were bottles of liquor. Lara counted three liters of Georgian champagne, two of Ukrainian potato vodka, and a bottle of French cognac. She also exhumed four loaves of crusty bread, a package of assorted fruit tats, Sasha’s prized cookies, cake, and several tins of Beluga caviar.

As she turned the empty sack upside down and shook it as if expecting something else to fall out, she commented.

“Do you mean to say that you’ve been gone over two hours, and this is all you were able to bring back? Why this isn’t even half the items I put down on the list. Where’s the milk, the chicken, and the fresh fruit I needed? Why our guests will positively starve!”

Already breaking the seal of one of the vodka bottles, Sergei made a vain attempt to defend himself.

“In anticipation of this snowstorm that’s upon us, I think every single babushka in Murmansk was out this morning hoarding food. The milk and poultry counters were bare by the time I got to them. And the only fresh fruit available was a load of rotting Cuban mangoes.”

“Well, I see that you had a bit more luck at the liquor store,” Lara wisely observed, as she set four clean glasses on the crowded counter. “And where in the world did you ever find real Beluga caviar? I thought all of it was being exported for hard currency.”

A gleam sparkled in Sergei’s eyes.

“Sometimes being an officer in the People’s Navy does have its benefits, my dear wife. Old man Litvak, the fellow who runs the Red Star liquor store was a naval commander himself during the Great Patriotic War. Though I’ve heard his exaggerated exploits told time and again, I bit my tongue and listened as he took me back to the time he single-handedly ran a Nazi blockade to successfully land a shipment of food badly needed by the starving citizens of Leningrad. After he finished this narrative, I humbly asked if he knew where a current-day naval captain could find a special party treat to share with his wife and a small group of friends. Not only did he come up with the caviar, but that bottle of Napoleonic cognac as well.”

“I’ll have to remember that next time I’m out shopping,” reflected Viktor Belenko.

To this, Sergei shook his head.

“Sorry, Senior Lieutenant. It only works for captains.” There was a wide grin on Sergei’s face as he filled up the glasses and proposed the first toast.

“To good friends, warm homes, and to peace in the Motherland!”

While each of the women took but a sip of the powerful potato vodka, their husbands each downed an entire glassful. Grabbing the rest of the bottle, Sergei beckoned Viktor to join him in the den.

With their glasses again filled, they settled down in the large, upholstered couch that sat beside the blazing fireplace. From the mounted radio speakers, Tchaikovsky’s soulful Symphony No. 5 in E minor began unraveling. Such a thoughtful piece of music proved to be the perfect background as the two submariners sipped their drinks and stared into the crackling embers.

“Your Lara seems very happy,” reflected Viktor. “And little Sasha is as adorable as ever. You are a very lucky man, Sergei Markova.”

“I don’t know about that, Viktor Ilyich. That sexy wife of yours is the type of woman a man dreams of.”

Viktor looked introspective.

“I guess that we’re both very fortunate in our own ways, my friend. Has this week gone as quickly for you as it has for me?”

Sergei rolled his eyes up and responded.

“I’ll say. The hours are just flying by, and all too soon we’ll be packing our bags and returning to the Neva. Speaking of the devil, weren’t you going to put a call into our esteemed which man this morning?”

The senior lieutenant grunted.

“That I did, comrade. Ustreka sends his regards and was able to give me a fairly comprehensive update on the state of our refit. As we expected, the SS-N-15 nuclear-tipped antisubmarine missiles are the only weapons that have yet to be delivered. Other than that, we seem to have a full complement of torpedoes and decoys. Our food larders have also been restocked, though Ustreka mentioned that much of the fresh produce and fruit is little more than garbage. The which man also reported that a supply of Arctic outerwear arrived late last night. In the same locker with this clothing were a dozen Kalaishnikov assault rifles, several portable mortars, and a large supply of ammunition and grenades.”

“You don’t say,” returned Sergei Markova “I don’t remember requesting such specialized gear. Do you, Viktor?”

Shaking his head that he didn’t, the senior lieutenant continued.

“Since this delivery didn’t show on the ship’s manifest, the which man was prepared to turn it away, when our good friend the Zampolit intervened. It seems that Comrade Zinyagin knew all about the shipment, for he personally signed the receipt invoice.”

“Now that is strange,” observed Sergei as he reached for the bottle to refill their glasses. “I must remember to ask our dear Political Officer about this when I meet with him at the end of the week.”

“I still think Konstantin Zinyagin is a snake,” disgustedly spat Viktor. “That man can’t be trusted for a single minute. Some keeper of morale, when he’s instigated the majority of personnel problems we encounter on the Neva.”

“Now Viktor, is that any way to talk about out beloved Zampolit? After all, the Party puts such individuals on board each and every Soviet warship merely to direct the crew’s ideological indoctrination.”

“Like hell they do, Sergei. You know as well as I that officers such as Konstantin Zinyagin are there for one purpose only, to act as Party spies.”

Any response on Sergei Markova’s part was cut short by the arrival of his wife.

“Just like I told you, Tanya. I knew that they’d be talking shop,” observed Lara, as she placed a platter of caviar down on the coffee table.

Following with two half-filled glasses and an open bottle of champagne, Tanya Belenko took this opportunity to get her own two kopecks in.

“It never fails, does it, Lara? Leave these two alone for more than ten seconds and they can’t wait to talk about that damn submarine of theirs. I don’t understand it. When they’re out on patrol, they always tell us how during every spare moment, their thoughts are of us, yet when they finally get home, what do they do in their spare time but talk about that infernal boat.”

Sergei realized the truth in this statement and held up his hands.

“You’re right, ladies. This is certainly no time for talk of work. So what do you say to getting this party rolling? Has anyone tried that caviar yet?”

Lara’s face filled with an ecstatic expression.

“I can’t tell a lie. We both gave it a try in the kitchen, and are you two in for a special treat. Why should such a delicacy be only reserved for rich foreigners? Such a policy is a national disgrace.”

As the conversation turned to the wisdom of bartering away national treasures such as Beluga caviar for the hard currency it brought, the telephone began to ring. Lara was in the process of turning for the bedroom phone when the ringing abruptly stopped, to be replaced by the shrill voice of their daughter.

“Poppy, it’s for you!”

These unexpected words hit Sergei like a blow to the stomach. Briefly catching the concerned stares of his guests, he put down his glass, excused himself, and headed for the bedroom.

Several minutes passed before he returned. It only took one look at his sullen face to know he would be the bearer of bad news.

“I don’t believe it,” said Sergei with a heavy sigh, “but I just got off the phone with Admiral of the Fleet Kharkov. And not only has he just landed in Murmansk, he wants — immediately — to meet us at the docks, where we’re to have the Neva ready for sea at the next change of tide!”

A moment of constrained silence followed as the navy men wives exchanged disappointed glances while the tragic conclusion of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth symphony rang out appropriately in the background.